The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 595
The four warships under Liu Guoxuan had folded into battle sails, lined up in a straight "one" formation, and quickly passed between the two Qing army's chasing boats.

At the moment when the sides of the two sides crossed each other, bursts of violent fire broke out on the side of the Ji'an and other ships that had already been prepared.

At this time, the distance between the two sides was less than a hundred steps, and even the gunner with the lowest level of training had a high hit rate.When the Ji'an moved away from the enemy ship, it just completed two and a half rounds of salvo, and a total of more than twenty shells hit the enemy ship.

Due to the limitation of the number of gunners and the space in the gun bay, the sail warship usually only shoots at one side. Therefore, the captive ship on the west side that was "taken care of" by the Ji'an was already riddled with holes, and the bow was almost completely smashed. It's all over the place.

The firepower of the other three light frigates will be worse.Although they concentrated on the east side, they only left less than ten bullet holes on the chasing boat. The two mainmasts of the enemy boat were still intact, and they turned their heads hastily to prepare to fight back.

Liu Guoxuan glanced at the battle situation, pointed to the large number of enemy ships moored directly ahead, and said loudly: "Order, turn to the east at a distance of two chains from the prisoner ship in the port, and keep the speed below two knots. Leave the two ships behind Li Guangbi behind." an enemy ship."

"Chain" is a commonly used nautical unit, and a chain is equal to one-tenth of a nautical mile.The two chains are about 370 meters. After turning another [-] degrees, they will almost stick to the face of the enemy ship.

As the flag bearer issued his order, three large and small warships headed by Ji'an quickly arrived at the deepest part of Laizhou Port.At the distance where the sailors' clothes on the deck of the moored captive ship could be seen, they turned to the east side with full left rudder one after another, lined up, and pointed the starboard side at the enemy ship.

Then Liu Guoxuan easily ordered: "All ships can fire freely."

It wasn't until this time that the Qing army in Laizhou Harbor jumped onto their warships one after another when they were alarmed by the sound of artillery just now.The soldiers on duty on the ship panicked and ran to their posts, those who hoisted the sails, those who hoisted the anchors, all in a hurry.

However, it was obviously too late.

The three forward ships of the Ming army sailed past the moored Qing warships at a slow speed, and shells rained down on the outermost enemy ships.

All of a sudden, countless roaring iron balls left holes of various sizes on the captive ship, and at the same time, a large number of splinters burst out, blasting at the Qing soldiers on board.

Under the huge impact of the artillery shells, these pieces of wood are extremely fast, and their power is no less than that of blunderbuss bullets.The enemy ship that was shot was wailing, and a large number of captive soldiers with stubble on their bodies and heads clutched their wounds or ran aimlessly for help, or fell to the ground and rolled and moaned.

Whenever the Ji'an and others sailed past an enemy ship, blood flowed across the ship, and it turned into a miserable state of purgatory.Under such a fierce blow, how can anyone continue to prepare for combat?All the soldiers of the Qing army hurriedly fled to the boat parked inside through the cables, and some even jumped directly into the sea to escape.

Liu Guoxuan's warship sailed eastward for about a mile, then turned around collectively, switched to the port side to engage the enemy, and started the next round of strafing.

When the Ji'an turned to the west, Liu Guoxuan heard rumbling guns coming from the sea not far away.He looked around through the gunpowder smoke blown away by the sea breeze, and saw that several other raiding teams of the Navy had also rushed to their predetermined positions.

According to the established plan, the "U"-shaped area for berthing in Laizhou Port is divided into six large blocks, each of which is less than one mile wide.Each large ship of more than [-] tons brings three to five light frigates to attack one piece.The main task of the raid is to make the outer enemy ships lose their mobility, so that the ships parked inside will be blocked and unable to sail out, so they can only be honest targets.

As the vanguard, Liu Guoxuan was in charge of the deepest part of the port, that is, the enemy ships on the southernmost side. Most of the ships stationed here were auxiliary ships, so the number of warships he brought was also the least.

The fourth-class cruiser Guangzhou on the northwest side led the four light frigates to fire first. Zheng Zhilong's seven large boats with thousands of materials were parked on the outermost side, and there were four other ships of the same type inside, as well as large boats to shuttle boats. Nearly forty warships of various sizes.

The 400-pound heavy guns carried by the Guangzhou were astonishingly powerful, and the gunners on this ship were also more experienced. After only two rounds of salvos, two rounds were torn out near the waterline of a large boat of more than [-] tons. In the three-foot-diameter hole, seawater along with air bubbles poured in from the shot.

Before the light frigate behind could "make up the knife", the ship began to tilt seriously, and it was hopeless.

Then the Zhangzhou, Fuzhou, Guangsignal, and Jianning also began to pour shells at the enemy ships in Laizhou Port. Up to this time, no Jianlu warship had come out to meet them.

Liu Guoxuan had a panoramic view of the battle situation, and immediately said to the adjutant: "Order, the No. [-] gun position will be replaced with chain bombs, and all the other [-]-pound guns will fire scorching bombs!"

"Yes!"

His order was quickly passed into the gun bay, and the gunners were immediately busy.

When the Ji'an entered the attacking position again, the heavy artillery on the front side on the port side fired first, but what flew out from the muzzle was not ordinary artillery shells, but two iron balls tied together by three-foot iron chains.

The two iron balls began to rotate irregularly under the pull of the iron chain.When it passed the mast of an enemy ship, the chain wrapped around the middle of the mast.Then, under the torn force of the two shells, the mainmast of a 80-material boat was easily broken into two ends like a matchstick.The upper half of the mast even flew another [-] meters under the influence of the chain bullets, and landed on a sentinel boat parked inside. Three people were smashed to pieces immediately.

In addition, the gunner of the Ji'an put the shells into the prepared charcoal stove, burned them to a red state, and then stuffed a cake-shaped wooden mat at the muzzle, and then carefully loaded the red-hot shells into the barrel.

The igniter cooperated very skillfully, and immediately pulled the gun rope - if the action was slower, the gunpowder would probably be ignited by the hot shells.The red-hot cannonball flew out of the muzzle with the roar, and hit the side of the opposite enemy ship, tearing a big hole in the ship's plank, and whizzed into the cabin.

Immediately there was a scream accompanied by the smell of burnt flesh.And the Nake shell relies on its extremely high temperature to ignite all wood chips, cloth and even gunpowder it comes into contact with.

As the scorching bullets fired by the four twelve-pound guns at the front and rear of the Ji'an hit successively, the outermost captive ship began to smoke and catch fire.The gunpowder of one ship was even ignited, and a horrible explosion occurred, and the deck of the ship flew more than four feet high under the huge air current!
(End of this chapter)